Living in his shadow his niece explains what it was like. I often think that there are other victims of killers like him, relatives who have no choice but to be relatives through birth - friends we can choose - that old saying, but relatives we're sort of stuck with. It was interesting to read her point of view.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... death.html

_________________Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well~Peter Ustinov

Living in his shadow his niece explains what it was like. I often think that there are other victims of killers like him, relatives who have no choice but to be relatives through birth - friends we can choose - that old saying, but relatives we're sort of stuck with. It was interesting to read her point of view.http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... death.html

Interesting and somehow it seems we don't always think of the effect on families related to someone so vile.

SAN DIEGO -- The family of a woman whose nude, bound body was found hanging at a California mansion has filed a $10 million lawsuit claiming she was murdered.

The suit was filed Friday in federal court by the family of 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau and seeks general and punitive damages. Zahau was found hanged at a Coronado mansion in July 2011. Her death was ruled a suicide.

But Zahau's family always believed her death was suspicious. The lawsuit claims Adam Shacknai and Dina Shacknai, the brother and ex-wife of Zahua's boyfriend, Jonah Shacknai, and Dina Shacknai's twin sister, Nina Romano, were responsible for the woman's death. The filing of the lawsuit was first reported by U-T San Diego (http://bit.ly/1aD6eO9).

(Dr. Anthony J. Garcia is linked with the murders of Dr. Roger Brumback and wife Mary and also possibly with the murders of housekeeper Shirlee Sherman and 11-year-old Thomas Hunter who was the son of another Creighton doctor.)

Dr Anthony J. Garcia, 40, has been charged with those killings and two 2008 murders that police have said were acts of revenge against two doctors at Creighton University in Omaha who fired him from a pathology residency in 2001 for unprofessional conduct.

As a district judge, and a senior district judge at that, I admit that my perspective on what is important is skewed. That admitted, I find United States v. Strong, No. 12-1842 (1st Cir., July 19, 2013) utterly mystifying and amazing.

In Strong, the defendant was convicted of three misdemeanors, and received a sentence of seven days in jail, for literally messing up a bathroom in a federal court-house. He claimed to have a problem with his bowels, but the government saw his conduct in a more malicious light. This is the way the bathroom looked to the cleaning lady shortly after Strong left the bathroom:

Quote:

The supervisor of the courthouse’s cleaning company, Christina Mason, arrived to clean the restroom after receiving a call requesting that it be cleaned. She smelled feces from the hallway, and when she opened the door she could not enter the restroom because feces were on the floor where one would need to step to get inside. The restroom was unusable because it was so soiled. She saw that seventy-five percent of the floor was covered in feces, in chunks. She also saw feces smeared in spots on several walls in different areas. In fact, some of the feces were smeared more than two feet up on the walls. Feces were smeared on the paper towel and toilet paper dispensers, on the toilet paper itself, and on part of the toilet seat and the left side of the toilet bowl. There was also urine in the toilet, which had not been flushed; no feces were inside the liquid in the bowl. Mason testified that the feces were not only all over the bathroom but were “smear[ed] in spots,” and not splattered. Strong’s plaid blue boxers, which were covered in feces, were found by Mason draped over the wastebasket where Strong admits he placed them because they were “destroyed.”

The state of the bathroom was so bad that Mason, who had fourteen years’ experience at the courthouse and training in cleaning up bodily substances, was initially at a loss for how to clean the restroom. She devised a plan and first used paper towels and disinfectant to remove the feces from the floor. She then cleaned the restroom three times with a bleach and water solution, and discarded the soiled underpants, the potentially soiled rug that had been outside the restroom, and the clothes she had been wearing using a biohazard bag.

Id. at slip op. pp. 5-6.

Strong appealed. If you include the dissent, and the photographs attached to the decision, the discussion on whether the defendant had been proven guilty goes on for 57 pages. Two judges voted to affirm the conviction, and one judge voted to reverse.

I don’t know much. But I do know this: No misdemeanor case about a soiled toilet and a seven-day jail sentence is worth 57 pages of attention from a United States Court of Appeals. That’s true even if you, like me, are a freak about toilets.

Fruitvale Station (originally titled Fruitvale) is a 2013 American independent drama film written and directed by Ryan Coogler. It is Coogler's first feature-length film. It is based on the true story of Oscar Grant, a young man who was killed by BART police officer Johannes Mehserle at the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Station in Oakland, California.

_________________Do not go gentle into that good night.___________ Rage, rage against the dying of the light

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – A suspect remained on the loose late Tuesday evening, after stabbing a teenage girl nearly a dozen times just steps from her front door in the Woodhaven section of Queens.

As CBS 2’s Alice Gainer reported, Natasha Martinez, 17, remained at Jamaica Hospital after undergoing surgery for stab wounds to her back, arms, stomach and kidney.

Martinez was walking home from work alone around 11 p.m. Monday when a man came up behind her on 85th Street and plunged the knife into her repeatedly.

“She’s in the hospital in really bad condition, you know,” said Natasha’s mother, Wendy Martinez.

As CBS 2’s Don Champion reported, a surveillance video shows the stabbing suspect moments before his act Monday night, strolling along wearing a hoodie...-----Investigators Tuesday had only a vague description of the suspect, who is described as a black male, approximately 5-foot-6. No motive has yet surfaced for the attack, except Walking While White & Hispanic...

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The problem with putting two and two togetheris that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two. -Dashiell Hammett